Dispatches from the middle

Alright. We’re geeking out on this one. I first read Michel de Certeau in a class I took a couple of years ago on cities, or more specifically, on the cultural and social practices that take place within and because of urban environments, and I’ve been thinking about his writing in relation to running ever since. In The Practice of Everyday Life, de Certeau examines numerous everyday practices, one of which is walking. I would argue, however, that his analysis can be applied to all modes of self-propulsion. de Certeau describes movement through space as a means of creating or designing that space and endowing it with meaning, thus positing movement itself to be a creative act. People are unconsciously inspired to create “texts” out of their daily movements by instilling the spaces through which they move with new and individual significances. Movement through space becomes the creation of space; motion acquires a signifying function, becoming an act of enunciation where, through the “pedestrian speech act […] [,] the walker transforms each spatial signifier into something else” (98).  Every space already possesses a repertoire of meanings gained through previous use and traversal.  Each instance of movement through such a symbolic order or system of signification endows objects and spaces with new and multiple meanings and thus produces texts. One may transform signifiers, one may affirm, negate, test, discard, or transgress certain possible trajectories, while actualizing only a selection of these.

Trajectories and meanings become layered as different individuals execute multiple trespasses of any given space. Space, routes, directions, and objects become repositories of layered meanings, all of which play off one another. In fact, de Certeau states: “it is the very definition of a place […] that it is composed by these series of displacements and effects among the fragmented strata that form it and that it plays on these moving layers” (108). The totality of temporal and spatial strata, including history and future potential, comprised within a space endow it with meanings. These are then constantly altered and augmented by the addition of new strata through the traversal and reuse, or re-experiencing of said space. It is precisely this dynamism of significance that creates a place, allows it to be named, renamed, remembered, or rediscovered.

An excellent, and beautifully simple, example of this creation of meaning through movement can be found in running the same route over and over again, whether it’s one person or many doing the running. It fascinates me how certain places and spaces through which I run on a regular basis have gained – for me – such rich textures over the years. A certain route is experienced in different weather conditions, while thinking different thoughts, chatting with different companions, engaging in different conversations, wearing different shoes, travelling at different speeds, in different moods, with different goals, different rest-of-the-days behind and in front of one. Each traversal of a given route is a different experience, which leaves a mark, and these compound, enrich, and play off one another to instill in places, spaces, and routes multiple and proliferating significances. I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on this – how your routes become repositories of memory and experience. And yes, I realize that in one sense any meaning and significance existing for a person exists within the person, not within their environment, but humor me. I still think it’s cool.

It also makes me wonder at the colossal barrage of new meanings that must wash over New York each year as the marathon thunders through the city. Tens of thousands of people having very intense and very intimate experiences of the same route all at the same time…they’ll be washing meaning off the road for months afterward.

de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Print.

That’s right. Works cited.